4 Pictures 4 Poems

"Winter floated in, hovering just above the carpet, sweeping up then down. Around the legs of the dining room chairs it swept, moving between the wood of the antique dresser and an open vent close to the floor. Out from the vent, heat emerged from its slumber and met winter. It was a ballet without violence and no blood was shed, only memory was lost, and even that was questionable."

"The boy stared out the window, when his grandma said “Boy! Don’t you go out there. Not in them streets. You just keep looking out that window and be thankful to God for them bars on that window and the fence in the yard. Can’t nobody get in that way. Only them bullets…..only them bullets.”

"She wore a mask. So did everyone else. Under her mask, was another mask, and another, and another. She wondered to herself “Did those other people have different masks, too?” She hoped they did. Life was hard without a disguise. To have only one, was nearly as tragic. But to have none? That was enough to ruin the day. And so she slipped on her new mask. “It helped.” She thought. It erased the past. If not completely, it kept it distant. From the window she could see only its outline. And maybe, someday, she wouldn't see it at all."

"It was a bad day for the stork. He’d delivered many a baby, but no baby like this. It weighed as much as a boulder, and was a dark as a well. Not its skin. But its soul, which was black like night. And so the clouds turned dark and the sun disappeared from sight, as the stork flew. “Better fly quick.” He thought. For even my wings are beginning to fail. But there was no landing place in sight. As the sky spread out, black as night."